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tracking down stuff in the age of digital proliferation

D sent me some choice things relevant to my work that she found - I dunno how - great stuff. I thought we might gather together tips on what is probably the most important skill for research. This also because S asked about tracking down a book. Here is my fumbled late night response. Please add any further tips if you can:

As for finding texts - this is the main skill to learn as a researcher, and the rules/ways and means are changing almost daily. I used to be that we went to the library, and if the book was not there, asked for it through Inter Library Loans. You can look up things available in different libraries, or track a book to a library.
That's the legal path. I mean, besides ordering and buying the book, but although of course I'd never endorse digital piracy, nowadays I can understand when students or lowly paid academics notice how a great many books are available on para-legal sites like scribd, AAAAArg, or similar. Even Amazon and Google books will give up large sections of a book online freely (again para-legal - do authors get a royalty from such partial reads?). Another site, a newcomer I think, to all this has become really efficient, for a donation: http://book4you.org/ - without donation you can download ten books a day, and its pretty comprehensive. However, just looking for you, it does not have the one you asked about.
There is a journals version of this the of thing now too - pretty much everything ever in a journal - via http://sci-hub.bz/
Of course some internet providers are finding these sites blocked by legal injunction, but others work around them just as fast. The game is changing.
So, my message, as ever to postgrad researchers, is 'skill up' - this is the time to really become efficient, which means finding out how, keeping up with changes, and not wasting your time fiddling about too much - or wasting anyone else's time for that matter :) Learn to use Interlibrary loans where you can, and digitally borrow where you must. Good luck.
I'll post this on the blog I guess. Maybe its useful.

Cheers, J

From Howrah Bridge to Kahaani: Changes in the cinematic representation of the city of Calcutta in two Bollywood films (1958 -2012)

From Howrah Bridge to Kahaani: Changes in the cinematic representation of the city of Calcutta in two Bollywood films (1958 -2012)

A careful revisiting of the two films Howrah Bridge and Kahaani seems to reveal that certain tropes are used in both the films (despite them being separated by so many years and hence embodying so many changes) albeit imbued with different set of meanings. Stereotypes, both colonial and post colonial, surrounding the city have been subverted through the genre of mystery. This is presumably seen here in the unabashed acceptance of the so called tag of being an ‘unplanned city’ by the British and that of an urban squalor feeding off a cultural heritage as commented upon by various writers, politicians who left the city in the face of economic decline and better prospects elsewhere.

Below I have delineated certain key points around which I shall compare the two films and their representations of the city.

1. Mysterious City

In both Howrah Bridge (1958) and in Kahaani (2012), the city of Calcutta is seen as mysterious.

A dialogue from the former between Prem Kumar and Edna is a case in point. On being asked by Edna, “Apko kaisa laga Calcutta”, Prem says, “Pasand aya par bahut bada hai, aur kuch ajeeb, mysterious, tumhare mafik….Par mujhe seher se koi umeed nahin, par tumse hai”

Again in Kahaani (2012) the song goes on to describe Calcutta as “Dil ka bazar hai, par thoda sa bizarre hai/…..Aisa sheher hai jiska double role ha/Chalte rehta phir bhi jata kahin nahin/ are baba kuch to gondogol hai”. Vidya Bagchi, says that every person has two names, two faces, just like the city.  Yet again Bob Biswas performs a hysterical act in a public place to scare Vidya by saying, “Madam, Kolkata dangerous city. Yahan kabhi bhi kisi ko bhi kuch bhi ho sakta hai. Bojhaan, bhlaor jonne. Laut jaiye”. This accentuation of the city mysterious, almost to the point of seeming ludicrous, is a trope to subvert the dominant image to one’s own advantage. In this case to literally force a perceived enemy to pack their bags and flee the city.

Moreover, right at the outset, both the films have been described as belonging to mystery-suspense/thriller genre

2. First Contact:

In Howrah Bridge, an immigrant businessman Madan Kumar from Rangoon gets killed in Calcutta. Prem Kumar, his brother goes to Calcutta for business (but in reality to search for his brother’s killers). His first encounter with the city shows him being pushed into a luxurious Calcutta hotel, with a beautiful dancing girl seducing him. As if the city was personified as the seductive dancing girl.

In Kahaani too the protagonist of the film, Vidya Bagchi, is a Bengali residing in London. On arriving at the Calcutta airport (again a transit space like the hotel) she is surrounded by taxi drivers and rental car drivers with the hope of catching a ‘prospective buyer/passenger’. Vidya is bewildered and finally agrees to be with a person whom she seems to connect with intuitively. The city is here being shown as one that still has her heart in place, despite degeneration on other levels.

3. Spatial Politics

In Howrah Bridge, all the action takes place in the north of the city where the Chang Hotel is situated in Chinabazar and Barabazar is spoken of as the hub of jewelery making and buying. Only the first scene begins with the Dock near the Writers Building.

In Kahaani, the south of the city like Kalighat, Triangular Park, Park Street, Camac Street, Monalisa Guest House (although imbued with a certain class politics in the film) is under the spotlight. These are the areas where the upholders and makers of law, order and culture reside. Whereas as soon as the question of the secret hideout of Milan Damji ( the killer ) arrives, the images shift to the North of the city with its  Nakhoda Masjid, the teeming millions jostling with each other on the busy, cramped streets, teasing us into the small bylanes of Barabazar and Iqbalpur.

Besides, Satyaki (Parambrata) who is a police officer, is shown to work and not live in South Calcutta Kalighat, making his trips across his workplace and home using the tram (a hint possibly to the bari/basha dichotomy of 19^th century). So the south of the city, is seen as a workplace and not residence for certain sections of the service class.

These spatial references besides taking into account the particular historical moment also reek of the colonial division of the city into black and white towns which again were contained within certain power relationships. In the films, though the division remains, it is however imbued with new kinds of meanings. Moreover the spatial expansion of the city and its growth into suburban areas is also reflected in the new areas/localities included in Kahaani that were not so present in Howrah Bridge.

4. Using the songs in the films to understand streets and culture of Calcutta

A song from Howrah Bridge reveals not just the streets and their social function but also the people who reside in it

“ it ki dukki paan kaa ikkaa, kahi jokar kahi sattaa hai

suno ji ye kalakattaa hai

taali gaj ki jhil pe baabu aae rup ke daas, jhil kinaare badhati jaae matavaalo ki pyaas

naa pocket me maal hai baabu, naa kapadaa naa lattaa hai

suno ji ye kalakattaa hai

chauragi ke chauk me dekho matavaale bangaali, rasagulle si mithi baate inaki shaan niraali

kahi benarji kahi mukarji, kahi ghosh kahi dattaa hai

suno ji ye kalakattaa

ye basti hai aag kaa dariyaa isame howrah pul hai, apani jaan bachaa lo baabu varanaa dibbaa gul hai

sar par paanv rakh kar bhaago katane vaalaa pattaa hai

suno ji ye kalakattaa hai”

Again the streets are described in the 1984 movie Tinmurti in the following ways, revealing the mystery of the city (though this film does not form part of my comparison, I decided to include a song from it, to reveal the continuity of the idea of the city mysterious even in an 1984 bollywood film, marking a continuity with the two films already spoken of)

“ Emon Majar shohor, Bujhli Bondhu

Kolkata ek bodo Golokdhandha

Bhul korbe boubazar e, bou kinte gele

Dekbe na to ekta seyal , sealdah e ele

Hatibagan e nei to hathi

Bagbazar e rosogolla jogotjora naam

Phoolbagan ne nei to bagan, o phool

Shyambazar e baje na to shyamer bashi bhai

Ballygunge e bali nei

Tallygunge e tali

Sudhu thaken kalighat e ma kali….”

In Kahani (2012) the songs ascribe certain traits to the city, instead of describing it only in terms of its streets and material culture. A mixture of both Bengali, hindi and English is used in the song to make it relatable as a city to different groups of people and different parts of the country who consume and who imagine the city.

“Kolkata khwaishon armaano ka achaar hai
Jitne bhi door jaao, Dil se na far hai
Kolkata dekho toh baaqi duniya bekaar hai
Strong hai powerful hai phir bhi lachar hai
Bilkul naya hai
Phir bhi Beete kal mein ye raftaar hai
Aami shotti bolchi….”

5. Dopplegangers?

In both the films, nearing their climax, the maze of streets of Calcutta and its labyrinth like nature is being used as a tool to show the chase between two opposing forces (Bob Biswas/ Shreekanth vs Police or Vidya vs Milan Damji in case of Kahaani ; and between Edna and Chang’s men in howrah Bridge) The confusing bylanes of the city and its so called imagery of lack of any planning is being subverted in this game of good versus evil which takes centre stage in literary and cultural concerns of the times.

It is uncanny that both have a certain shot of the river right below the Howrah Bridge, dividing the river and the ghats into two halves. The similarities in the scenes around the Reception desk in both the movies lingers like a ‘spectre’.

The climax in both is also eerily similar. Deception is used to reveal the truth. However, the implied meanings in both seems to be of a different kind.

6. Changes in the Image of Calcutta as the embodiment of feminine virtue and of progress

In Howrah there is a sense of optimism to what the city’s future might be. The city is also yet not so sure of itself. It has multi communities and classes of people residing within it from the Sikhs to the Chinese to immigrants from Rangoon. Each of them flirts with the ‘female’ personified city in their own ways (city personified as the figure of Madhubala/Edna ). Some bribe it with money, some with love. Ultimately the city chooses love but has also learnt the tricks of deception to reach the truth. The city is shown to be young, full of possibilities, rich in economic activities, trade networks with Singapore, Hong Kong albeit in illegal goods like Opium, stolen dragon masks etc. The city pulls people into its vortex. Yet at the same time deception is taken as natural and used as a tool to fool people for rightful means. Crime and violence are corollaries to prosperous places and the city of Calcutta is no exception to this, in the film. Cultural representations like the song “Mera Nam Chin Chin Chu” with Helen dressed as a Chinese young lady, and the Sikh taxi drivers celebrating their workplace through Punjabi dance/songs shows the variety of cultural practices co-existing in the city.

In Kahaani however, a sense of disappointment with what the city has become is evident in the fact that the city is trying to speak through a voice of understanding its limits but also positing a replacement to its economic-political displacement by seeking a uniqueness in its emotional rhetoric of city with a heart, a place where truth still resides. Here again the city is personified as a woman, albeit one which is fairly strong in her position and can fight for and win her rights despite being vulnerable. (As against in Howrah Bridge where the city personified as a woman was not so sure of her position and weighing her options).

Moreover, culturally the city in Kahaani is representing itself through the festival of Durga Puja. The city has taken a definite economic and its corresponding cultural position. It has created this homogenous cultural symbol that would subsume and incorporate all the varying cultural strands, unlike in Howrah Bridge where the economic variety and activities replicates itself in representation of the cultural diversity of the city.

7. Deception, selfishness, class, gender in the urban Calcutta

There are layers of deception and truth in both the films, where one is left wondering till the end what is what and who is who and for what and for whom. This game of hide and seek to describe the city and its people is a trope in both the films.  

In both the films, the protagonist seeking justice is seen to get help from the so called dregs of society. A dancer in a hotel, a ‘tanga’ driver in the case of Howarah Bridge and the young policeman and the child in the case of Kahani. They seem to find solidarity with the so called ‘other’ protagonist, both seeking justice in a mysterious/selfish city.

The movie starts with a person of the lower class using the Howrah Bridge as a resting point to smoke up ‘chillam’ whereas it is used as a point to throw a murdered individual by the upper classes. There is also this sense of aspiration to acquire the status higher than oneself through the acquisition of money, goods by the rural folk in the film, however this aspiration is constantly questioning the idea of morality and loss of innocence in the face of it. One of the film’s characters is unabashedly selfish and asks for his commission in every job that he facilitates. Money is seen as a ‘masculine’ space constantly teaching and being overpowered by the ‘feminine’ essence of the city which is pure, innocent, vulnerable yet moral.

Immigrants like Chinese do not have allegiance to the city, they are just there for making money and leave the second they feel threatened. Class boundaries are self constituted as a device to one’s ends in Howrah Bridge, undergirded by class solidarities. The image of the Howrah Bridge as one where 10,000 people travel to and fro the bridge is seen as a powerful symbol of its prosperity.

8. Commodity Festishism and aural-visual culture

In Kahaani ‘power ridden symbols’ are questioned through humor - Vidya Bagchi, for example, questions her husband “Lal par shada sari – Kolkata mein sab log pehente hain. Sab? Mard bhi?”  Again the “lal pad sada sari” is used to confuse the police in the end. Wherein the lal pad is politically imbued with different meanings, subverting its essence and reinstating the voice of the subaltern.

Songs used in the film, like those of, Sob koro prem koro na, Amaro porano jaha chay, jane kahan mera jigar gaya ji’s Bengali version, uses the very trope of Calcutta as a city of art, dance and music, to entertain and to commercialise the film to reach a wider audience.

The city is made to come alive through the sounds such as those of hawkers shouting, chants of pandits, food cooked, bus honks along with the visual images of lassi, puri, tea, chow cooked in the bazar and streets. This emphasizes, the informal nature of the city.

The typical tea glasses with embossed vertical lines –  again a familiar image to describe the city is being used in the film as a clue in the plot to finally find the whereabouts of the killer.

LIC officer also a  part time killer, a pregnant woman but actually a seeker of justice, creation of the myth of similar identities of Milan and Arnab, are used as plot tools, playing upon the idea of the city that deceives and also revealing Marxist idea that the apparent can be deceptive. The very tools to unravel the plot seems a practical extension of the apparent as fiction in Marx.

Further the very lanes of the city (which define the city) and where Durga Puja comes alive, is used for a very different purpose in the movie - for the purpose of tracking down deceptive people. The streets almost stand for a ritual cleansing of the soul and a removal of evil/rotten people from the city and the world.

9. Material Reality

The material reality and the historical context of the period in which Howrah Bridge and Kahaani were made also guided their production, reception and ideological positions: Through the 1950s and 1960s, Calcutta was arguably India’s most important city, ahead of Bombay and Delhi. In 1950, the city had a population of over 4.5 million. Bombay’s population stood at 2.6 million and Delhi’s at 1.4 million. Bangalore had just 0.8 million people. The population growth of a city is a reasonable indicator of its standing –as human capital flows to cities that deliver economic opportunity. Those who lived through those decades recall the cleanliness—all streets were washed every morning—and the efficiency of the civic administration. Calcutta was the base of India’s largest business groups, and had thriving heavy industry nearby.

In 2012, Calcutta Calcutta’s population had reduced beyond belief, residents were migrating outside of it rather than inside as a result of lack of economic activities and a lack of industrial growth. Issues of globalization, terrorism, IT became issues conjoining the global with the local. In pop culture the global fetish of certain images to describe Calcutta such as those of Durga Puja, intellectualism, scrumptious food, a city still with a soul have established their presence.

10. The title of the films

The city is represented through its infrastructural and transport facilities in the form of Howrah Bridge. In Kahani, the city is seen as a site of appropriating individual likes and dislikes, where questions of identities and communities takes centre stage.

Through the above key images and tropes of Calcutta as a mysterious city, bewildering one in the first instance, with a hierarchy between the north and south of the city, certain aural-visual representation, the personification of the city as female and the gender, race, culture, class politics surrounding it, commodity fetishism, I have tried to unpack the changing politics of the representation/location of the city of Calcutta in the two films Howrah Bridge and Kahani.

- DEVINA GUPTA

Investigative/Participatory Research for Exploration of Politics of Creative Labour

Despite his staunch opposition to British capitalism, Marx was in favour of the initiatives of the British government of conducting surveys and examinations of mills. The surveys aimed at regulating the working conditions of labourers in the factories. It was a result of these investigations that the British Government made the changes in the laws, putting restrictions on the labour that could be extracted from women and children.
The fact that such investigative endeavours were advocated by Marx and practiced by Engels establishes their potent necessity in exploring the working conditions of the marginalized proletariat and also the ‘precariat’. The term precariat has been in circulation since the 1980s but it has acquired prominence in the social movement struggles only recently. The term refers to the fluctuating and temporary nature of a job and other problematic complexities of housing, debt and exploitation that come along with them.
The term precarity can be extended to a number of labour practices. However, this write up is an attempt to emphasize the requirement of investigatory research into the politics and precarity of working conditions of the creative labourers. The word labour implies an act or work undertaken with intention of seeking wages in return and the word creative which originally signified divine intervention connotes newness, invention and innovation.

Creative labour is understood to be work undertaken for production of original, aesthetic, expressive and symbolic products as opposed to materialistic and utilitarian commodities. However, it is considered to be an act performed for personal fulfillment without any expectation of financial remuneration. Consequently, the term creative labour seems like an oxymoron where creativity is perceived as a self actualization activity unfit for demanding wages in return. As a result, those engaging in acts of creative labour have to strive hard for respect, recognition and remuneration.
Culture and creative labourers primarily work as freelancers on short term contracts that are counted in days and weeks with no permanent source of financial security. Intermittent spells of work coupled with uncertainty, low pay scales and absence of any health security amount to unfavorable working conditions and practices in culture and creative industries. The virtuousic nature of their work makes an assessment of their work, working conditions and wage systems all the more difficult. The end product of their labour, for instance the music of a pianist or the speech of a speech writer, is not a tangible end product which can be measured and paid for as in the case of traditional forms of day wage labour. Due to this abstract intangibility of creative labour, wherein it does not conclude into making of a materialistic product of utility, makes it subsume characteristics of political action. It would be germane to recall Hannah Arendt here, who compared virtuosos to those engaged in political action since an element of visuality, of making sure that one is visible to the audiences is involved in them both.
Furthermore, the industry is riddled with deep seated prejudices and inequalities based on multifarious patterns of race, gender, class, nationality and sexuality. In order to explore all these trajectories, uncover patterns of ‘flexploitation’ and contingencies of creative labour the participatory/parallel research methodologies could be employed, wherein not only the standpoints of the subjects are taken into consideration but they are encouraged to gather information as independent researchers

Marxist reflection on contemporary Bollywood political satirical movies: A special reference to “Kaun Kitney Paani Mein” (2015)

Since 1970s, film theories generally help to understand film language or film semiotics. Every film has its own “cinematographic language” which tries to convey a particular message or tries to give an impression. Cinemas have always been assumed as an effective vehicle for transmitting a symbiotic relationship with a particular ideology.  Stephen Heath has written, "That reality, the match of film and world, is a matter of representation, and representation is in turn a matter of discourse .... [I]n this sense at least, film is a series of languages, a history of codes."¹

Marxism and films are two orientations that have been merged sometimes. Films are considered as “a tool for critique of the ideology of the situation” and Marxism as “a tool for economic and political transformation of society”.² Films can be understood as a complementary aspect of the Marxist critique of society as a whole. Marxist aesthetics has been reflected earlier in many films of Pasolini, Chaplin, Dovzhenko, Eisenstein, Godard etc. In contemporary Indian Bollywood political satirical films, a trace of Marxism can be found also. “Kaun Kitney Paani Mein” (2015) is one of the examples of these films. Iconic aspects of pictorial signs/scenes, narratives, linguistic signs/ dialogues give an echo of certain Marxism aspect like utility value of commodity, production etc. Nila Madhab Panda’s this 1 hour 48 minutes’ creation revolves around two fictitious villages named ‘Upri’ and ‘Bairi’, which are made up of ‘upper caste’ and ‘lower caste’ respectively. They are at loggerheads over the distribution of water as generations back there was a murder by the Maharaja due to love issues between different castes. In the beginning of the film, the ‘utility value of water’ has been illustrated. Foreigners’ as well as Baniyas’ rejection to buy Maharaja’s land due to lack of water; worst sanitation condition in Upri village – these certain pictorial symbols as well as the story plot itself are used to emphasise the ‘value’ of water. Later it has been portrayed that packets of water become mode of exchange or currency in ‘Upri’. The depiction of adding ‘value’ to water reminds of Marxist thought ---

“Value, therefore, being the active factor in such a process, and assuming at one time the form of money, at another that of commodities, but through all these changes preserving itself and expanding, it requires some independent form, by means of which its identity may at any time be established.”³

This village is presented as the unproductive village as there is a Maharaja and he owns most of the land property of village. In the other hand, ‘Bairi’ village gives the connotation of “most productive village” as they have adapted socialist mode of production. It has been shown that ‘Bairi’ wins the award of ‘Nirmal Gram Puraskar’ because of good sanitation condition and also has been chosen for the ritual offerings of rice because of its best quality. The adaption of new methods “remineralisation of the soil”, “drip irrigation”, organic farming have helped in increasing the production of good quality rice there, as it has been deciphered through the dialogues of the character Paro (Radhika Apte). This certainly gives a symbolic representation of being “free” and “creative”; and also put the logic that why they became able to cultivate barren lands. They were not able to do that when their earlier generation worked under the Maharajas of ‘Upri’ village. The movie later ends with the solution of the water scarcity problem by again the Marxist notion of “Co-operation” on production. Overall in this film, the impression of Marxism has been used to portray an ideal image of productive society and also indicates to the feasible solutions of problems that can be occurred in a society.

References:

¹Prince, Stephen (Autumn, 1993). The Discourse of Pictures: Iconicity and Film Studies, Film Quarterly, 7(1), 16-28.

²Hamza, Agon (2016). Althusser and Pasolini: Philosophy, Marxism, and Film. US: Palgrave Macmillan.

³Marx, Karl (1887). Capital: A Critique of Political Economy. (Samuel Moore & Edward Aveling, Trans.) . Moscow, USSR: Progress Publishers. (Original work published 1867)

Marx trans

asked by Anushua which edition. I thought I should share my reply:

I had the LeftWord edition with me - a Delhi based Indian publisher. Their edition is based on the translation that Marx's daughter helped prepare. 

The penguin is useful because of better editorial footnotes and it includes a chapter Marx cut very late on. The progress press/international publishers one has some useful endnotes, same as LeftWord. 

Online see if you can find the Ehrbar translation which usefully puts the German alongside English, though he comes from a particularly narrow tradition so some of his translation choices remove intended ambiguities. 

There is no ideal. The French edition was the last Marx himself prepared. 

At home I use the fourth German and the 1890 English both reproduced in the MEGA - Marx Engels Gesammelte Arbeit. Far too expensive scholarly edition, but other volumes include notes and discarded drafts of all three volumes. 

I have the ambition, in the next two or three lifetimes, of reading all the editions in each language, including Chinese and Bangla. Perhaps three or four lifetimes are needed. Then another lifetime to put all the cross references and translation slips on a spreadsheet. By which time there probably won't even be spreadsheets. :)

Thanks

Against going deep into the woods of capitalism alone

 "The current system of power is fundamentally pretty invisible to us. It resides in finance, in all sorts of new kinds of management, and within computers and the media, which involves invisible algorithms that shape and manage what information we get. I think one of the most beautiful things artists and journalists can do at this moment in time is to be sympathetic and understanding to the people who voted for Brexit and Trump, and then bring to the fore the invisible power structures that those people feel completely distanced from so that they know where power is. And do it in such a way that isn’t obscure so people like me don’t have to read it three times just to understand it. Do it in a way that really grabs ordinary people’s imaginations....This might be quite a difficult one to get over, but I think this is really important: however radical your message is as an artist, you are doing it through self-expression—the central dominant ideology of modern capitalism. And by doing that, you’re actually far from questioning the monster and pulling the monster down. You’re feeding the monster. Because the more people come to believe that self-expression is the end of everything, is the ultimate goal, the more the modern system of power becomes stronger, not weaker."



http://www.artspace.com/magazine/interviews_features/qa/adam-curtis-hypernormalisation-interview-54468

'Hypernormalisation' by Adam Curtis: full film on Youtube (2 hr 40 mins): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-fny99f8amM

Notes for a less anxious academic life from Carl Cederström and Michael Marinetto

Even though this is for the Professors, and most of us are not, still makes for a great read.

"If it is still true that a university job is about teaching and writing, then in this age of market fundamentalism, those two faculty roles have attained a distinct nature. Successful researchers are what Christopher Hitchens once called "micro-megalomaniacs." They have carved out a small and distinct place for themselves, over which they rule uninhibitedly. Their writing is unreadable as well as unread, neither of which is a disadvantage, because, as Russell Jacoby reminds us, "if your work is readable and is read and therefore considered journalistic — then that’s a curse." And, he added: "If no one reads it, it’s certainly not held against you."

The same goes for teaching. At least where we teach — in Britain and Sweden — being a disengaged teacher is nothing to be ashamed of at a research university. In that institutional sector, a yardstick for academic success is the distance you can maintain between yourself and the students. We’ve both received advice over the years to spend our time and effort on research, not teaching.
Meanwhile, teaching or service aspirations — say, teaching something that actually engages students, or writing something that is actually read — are not rewarded."

Read the rest at: http://www.chronicle.com/article/How-to-Live-Less-Anxiously-in/237920?cid=cp79

Have You Seen an Indian "Mass Man"?

My seat was right behind his in the Route 107 mini bus. Dressed nattily, he took up two seats. Since the entire left hand side of his slight frame was engaged in managing an industrial-sized package, he had to hold up his tab-phone with his right hand. After ignoring a few photographs of his Facebook friends in picturesque locales, his index finger paused at a meme of Goddess Kali, bearing promises of spiritual merits rendered on ‘share’-ing. He did. More memes, photos and posts scrolled up. Then he stopped at another meme which showed the spectral impression of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s bust superimposed on a huge onrush of sea waves. The text urged to ‘share’ it for the sake of India’s development. His index finger hesitated for a few seconds, then complied.

Identified either as the ‘Bhakt’ (devotee) or as the Indian version of the fascism-ready
‘Mass Man’, (s)he unfortunately doesn’t inhabit specific ghettos and commute via designated bus routes. 

(contd...1039 words)




academia.edu PDF link: https://www.academia.edu/30606454/Have_You_Seen_an_Indian_Mass_Man_

Pride Walk and Rainbow Capitalism

This year Kolkata Rainbow Pride Walk was held on 11 December in which I participated. Actually it was for the third time that I participated in Pride Walk. And I cannot resist the temptation to express my views on it. The origin of pride marches can be traced back to June 28, 1969, in the US city of Manhattan when patrons of a gay club, Stonewall Inn, clashed with the police following a raid. The protests continued for a week and the event was dubbed 'Stonewall Riots'. A year later, the community carried out what's believed to be the first gay pride event, called the Christopher Street Liberation Day (CSLD) March. It was a sombre march, a far cry from what the event is today. The basic idea was to announce to the world that they existed. And there were strong voices against cultural stereotyping: the group protested outside Time magazine's office against an article terming homosexuality "shallow and unstable". Pride walks question everybody who doesn't agree with other people's way of living their lives. The pride marches do not just question stereotypes; they also celebrate all that is quirky, unacceptable and generally disconcerting. 

In educational spaces, hospitals, workplaces, residential units, queer people continue to face discrimination, physical and sexual harassment, sometimes violence leading to death. Here it is important to note that India’s rape laws have been amended to include any form of non-consensual sexual activity (in other words, any consensual sexual act is not rape). So, how does consensual sex other than peno-vaginal penetration continue to be criminalised under section 377? The central government has been openly homophobic and transphobic in its attitude towards India’s millions of queer people. The struggles of queer people are also implicated in, and in solidarity with, many other struggles and movements. Queer struggles rest on a vision of an anti-caste, queer-feminist, non-ableist, secular world – a world without military occupation and without the suppression of dissent.

Rainbow capitalism (also called pink capitalism or gay capitalism) is a term used to describe the incorporation of the LGBTIQ movement and sexual diversity to capitalism and the market economy. Specifically, the term refers to the targeted inclusion of the gay community, which has acquired sufficient purchasing power to generate a market focused specifically on them. Examples of such targeted inclusion are bars and nightclubs, LGBT tourism, or specialized culture consumption. As mainstream support for LGBTQ rights becomes increasingly more accepted and championed in our culture, it is clear that we still do not know how to express empathy to LGBTQ communities without decentring the real issues. Pride is dangerously “in” these days, but increasing support from national corporations tends to drown out marginalized voices. The co-opting of the rainbow flag by corporations and banks has made it easy to show support for LGBTQ rights—but perhaps deceptively easy. Many young Americans have grown of age in a world where pride and queer identity are something to be bought. When corporations support lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender rights, they are really capitalizing on another unnamed identity: consumer. Corporate sponsors hope that when LGBTQ persons and allies embrace a spectrum of sexuality, they will also embrace their identities as patrons of Netflix, T-Mobile, ebay or Whole Foods. The Guardian notes that many of San Francisco Pride’s biggest sponsors, like Facebook and Google, contribute to the growing income inequality in Silicon Valley, while members of the LGBTQ community struggle with homelessness in skyrocketing numbers. Members of the LGBTQ community have rallied against Wells Fargo’s sponsorship in particular, criticizing the bank’s history of investing in private prisons that incarcerate LGBTQ persons, especially queer and trans people of colour, at disproportionate rates.

            In India, in Delhi Pride Walk one can notice the obvious presence of English-speaking, highly educated, elite class people. But in Kolkata there is a remarkable presence of queer people belonging to working class. In KRPF, the masks that are used are mainly handmade. But in a way or other it helps market economy to make profit from this. In cities like Delhi, pride walk has turned into elite class propaganda forgetting its primary aim that is to eliminate all sorts of discriminations. From 2009 to 2013, there were investments in Indian pride walks by various big corporate. But after the 2013 Supreme Court verdict they shied away. Government follows a double standard. On the one hand it gives permission for pride walk; on the other it oppresses queer people in every sphere of life. Our society is a heteronormative, patriarchal, capitalist one the only aim of which is to make money in whichever way possible. This society needs constant supply of human labour the source of which is reproduction. The only kind of relationship that it endorses is that between legally married couple. So, it takes the queer people to be “other”. It does not care for the rights of those people, but in some way or other uses them for its own profit. Pride Walk is a protest against this, but one thing we should keep in mind that this protest should not beget other kinds of discriminations.